


The Easy Part

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Frank discussion of sex, Gen, Rich focused, Thesis statement: the Squips were sexually abusive, Trauma, Vulgar Language, and this impacts Jeremy and Rich going forward, discussion of do you wanna hang, not graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:41:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26883814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Jeremy and Rich discuss how having a Squip can really mess with things like sexuality and consent.
Relationships: Jeremy & Rich, Jeremy/Christine mentioned, but Rich might have other ideas, written platonically - Relationship
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	The Easy Part

Rich isn’t around when Christine pulls Jeremy into the janitor’s closet at school. He hears about it from Chloe. Jenna, who is driving the two of them home after a fruitful day of learning or whatever, shoots Chloe a significant look, which Chloe rolls her eyes at. 

“It’s not bitchy gossiping if I think they’re cute together!” Chloe insists. 

“Jenna’s just jealous she wasn’t the first to dish the dirt,” Rich says. He’s proud of himself. This is how regular teenagers talk. This is how they tease each other and have fun! He’s got this. 

“Jenna’s learning to mind her own business, thanks,” says Jenna. “What Christine and Jeremy do, and whatever closets Jeremy Heere may or may not be in are _not_ my business.” 

“Closets,” Chloe snorts, like she and Jenna are in on something that Rich isn’t, and maybe that something is a new way of vaguely implying shit instead of outright saying it. 

They pull into Rich’s driveway a few minutes later and wave goodbye. He doesn’t see Jeremy until the next day. They’re in the hallway, on the way to their shared math class. When they pass the janitor’s closet, Rich starts making kissing noises. Jeremy walks faster, so Rich speeds up too. He catches up to Jeremy, throws a hand over his shoulder, and stops. Jeremy’s frozen, his face scrunched up like he expects Rich to hit him. Rich is smart enough to shut his mouth, but not smart enough to know if he should let go of Jeremy or not. Maybe he’s not smart at all, because the urge to heckle Jeremy Heere every chance he gets persists like a kind of muscle memory, but his attempts to make it non-threatening never come off right. 

Eventually Jeremy comes back to himself and shakes Rich off him. He doesn’t say anything about it, just continues walking towards class, straight-backed and quiet. 

—————

Back when Rich was best friends with Jake, they’d talked a lot about their _conquests_ as the Squip told Rich to call them. It was a fun term, Rich had thought, like having lots of sex was the same as vanquishing lots of video game monsters. He tried to think of it that way when the act got to be too much, which it often did. 

Rich would like to have friends again. What he’s got instead is such an integral role in everybody’s shared trauma that they can’t really exorcise him from their newly formed squad. It doesn’t even matter if the others trust or god forbid like him. Rich is a part of things.

Jeremy, though. Jeremy’s one that Rich can connect to. Jeremy was in deep with his Squip. He doesn’t blame Rich. He still comes over to play X-Box. Rich isn’t that good at it anymore, but Jeremy doesn’t mind.

Jeremy comes over the afternoon of the math class incident. He brings a pizza with him, which is weird, because that’s something Jake used to do. Jake had known that Rich didn’t have food in the house. Maybe Jeremy knows too. Either way, it makes Rich want to make a bid for close friendship in the only way he knows how. And so, he waits for Jeremy to sit down on the floor of his room, lets the game run for a few minutes, and then blurts out: “Congratulations on fucking Christine.” 

Jeremy spits out his pizza. 

Has Rich said something wrong? Jeremy pauses the game to fix Rich with an annoyed stare. Weakly, Rich waggles his eyebrows at him. 

“In the janitor’s closet!” Rich continues. “That takes some guts.” 

Jeremy’s expression flattens. He rubs at the knee of his jeans, than stops himself. No fidgeting is a standard Squip rule. “She wanted to sing for me,”Jeremy mutters. 

“Huh?” 

Jeremy waves his hand. “Acoustics,” he says. Another hand wave. “Closets. Um. Singing. You follow?”

“... It was so good you made her sing with ecstasy?” 

Jeremy shakes his head. He’s bright red. “No. She just sang. She _sang_. By herself.” 

“Sex singing?”

“Just how many push-ups do you want me to have to do tonight? I have a life. I have homework.”

Jeremy rests his head on his knees. This isn’t going well. It’s also getting weird, which is normal for both Rich and Jeremy, because they’ve both been through some really weird shit. 

“Push-ups?” Rich asks. 

Jeremy nods. “How many did it make you do?” 

Rich frowns, and scoots closer to Jeremy. “Like a million,” he admits. “What’s that got to do with banging Christine?”

“Kinda hard not to think about sex when you’re literally hissing the word in my ear.”

“... Yeah, but you’re talking about push-ups, and I’m talking about smashing your dick into Christine’s spam purse. Two different things.” 

“First of all, what the hell. Second of all, I know I don’t have to listen to it, but sometimes I just want to it to shut up, y’know?”

Rich nods. He knows all about the work it takes to shut up the thing inside his head. Something dawns on him: “It made you do push-ups when you thought about sex?” 

“...Didn’t yours?” 

Rich shakes his head. A coldness has seeped into the room that is so at odds with the cheerful video game music playing in the background that Rich shuts the TV off. 

“Mine wanted me to think of it,” Rich admits. “It was a part of its plan or whatever. Like, if I didn’t go at it often enough, with the people it wanted me to be with...” Rich trails off with a shrug. 

The look Jeremy is giving him is horrified. “Are you okay?” he asks. 

Rich scoffs. “You’re just jealous that I got all fun while yours had you in a chastity belt... which I’m really, really, really sorry for, by the way.”  
Jeremy waves Rich off. “‘m fine,” he says. “Are you okay?” 

Rich grits his teeth. 

“Look,” he says, “out of everything that went down, the sex with the easy part.” 

Jeremy nods. He’s chewing on his lip. It makes him look stupid, and for a split second Rich wants to hurt him the way he used to— push that stupid face into a stupid toilet. 

If Jeremy knows how on edge Rich is, he doesn’t show it. “Mine tried to make me fuck Chloe,” he admits. “I didn’t want to, y’know, but she didn’t get it or didn’t care, so it was going to happen either way, and the thing is she was so drunk that she was falling off the bed. You’re not supposed to sleep with girls when they’re like that! Even if I’d _wanted_ it the whole thing would’ve been fucked up, and the only one with any control over anything would’ve been the fucking Squip.”

“You’re overthinking this,” Rich says. He doesn’t want to think about this at all. 

“I don’t know what to say. Rich. It’s just like... If you need to talk to somebody about this kind of stuff, you can talk to me, you know? I try with Michael sometimes, but he’s too nice, and it makes me useless. But if you feel like you need to be useless, I guess I could try being the nice one for once.”

Jeremy’s on to something with the whole uselessness thing. Rich feels like the floor’s been yanked out from under him, and his heart is beating way too fast, and he’s not into it, not at all. He closes his eyes, and summons his strength. 

“Are you coming onto me?” Rich asks, in a voice that doesn’t shake because he won’t let it. “If you wanna pull me into a closet some time, I won’t say no.”

Jeremy doesn’t answer him. Something isn’t computing, and Rich doesn’t know which one of them has gone wrong. 

Jeremy turns the TV back on. He reboots the X-Box and goes back to their video game as if their conversation had never happened at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: The discussion of “Do You Wanna Hang” in this fic isn’t meant to absolve Chloe of responsibility, but it is meant to highlight how wrongly the Squip was steering Jeremy.


End file.
